


The Hottest of Messes

by Creepy_Poetics



Series: The Infernal Tragicomedy [1]
Category: Christian Bible, Doctor Faustus - Christopher Marlowe, Faust - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Original Work
Genre: Angels, Bisexual Female Character, Demons, Fallen Angels, Faustian Bargain, Friends With Benefits, Genderfluid Character, Modern Retelling, Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-09-08
Packaged: 2020-07-25 01:19:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20024179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Creepy_Poetics/pseuds/Creepy_Poetics
Summary: After years of loneliness and abandonment, a failed grad student makes a final, desperate choice: she has asked Satan to be her friend for a year in exchange for her soul.





	1. Chapter 1

After she filled a syringe and set it by the sink, Scout looked in the mirror. One of the busted lights above the mirror made her worry lines look darker. Taking a deep breath, she blinked, flashing spots of blue and purple making her look bruised, haunted, till they faded. Scratch, her lanky black cat, loudly licked a paw and sat on the back of the toilet after causing half of her old graduate texts to collapse in the other room. It wasn’t so much her features she noticed when she looked at herself, but it was something seen-not-seen, a glow she hoped wasn’t too noticeable, since for anyone to notice would mean she was dipped in some radioactive pool.

For once, after years of hand-wringing and wishing she’d die because no one would miss her anyway, she felt  _ good _ . Ish. Since she sold her soul, she had more soul in her than the past twenty-three years she’d been “alive” in a life where disappointment knocked about every other hour. With Scratch here, there was potential. Scout had potential beyond a string of failures and half-hearted accomplishments.

She was good now. No longer a walking ghost story haunting the sidewalk like rain. She was happy, and if anyone thought they’d miss her after her year (now eleven months) was up, they should’ve let her know on the many birthdays. Only one person had ever wished her a good day. Otherwise, fuck ’em. Maybe she should’ve used her mortality and Satan’s powers to do something nice for others, to not be petty. But being nice hadn’t done a thing for her. It hadn’t made people more willing to comfort her when she broke her back to bend for them and was left numb in bed for days at a time. Everything she went through, she went through alone. Alone in the hotel room, waiting for surgery, thinking about how badly she needed Dad, wished he hadn't died. Just smelling his pine body spray had always been enough to calm her.

When she got back, hurting so bad in her face and breasts, and did her standard routine after dropping out of grad school, she’d counted the dimples in the white ceiling a thousand times; it would probably be a million times before anyone cared to notice she was missing. Once the rain stains started spreading above her head, she decided to do something. Kill herself. Get help. Something. Loneliness had a depth to it both alluring and insurmountable. Drowning in the Dead Sea, everything shadows and salt.

_ Nobody would care if you died.  _ A demon voice—hers.

Fuck it. Fuck everyone. This was her moment now. No one else’s. No one would ruin this new happiness for her. No more thinking about sad things. The past. Longing. She had replaced all the sad pop on her phone with metal. Sorry, Lana.

She could do anything she wanted now, and if it failed, well, it's not like she'd have to stick around to face the consequences.

Scratch watched her with what looked like no particular interest, and all Scout could think was that the whole cats being of the Devil thing couldn’t be more accurate. She had always liked cats, though, and after losing Molly from brain cancer when she was in middle school, she was happy to have a cat who'd never die. After that, she did what she could. Before Scout left the apartment, she wanted to get some leftovers out of the fridge to give to the strays who lingered around the building. They were, at least, grateful, unlike  _ some _ “cats.”

By all accounts, Scratch looked like a normal black cat with peevish, squinted amber eyes. What stood out was the pitchfork tail. A pitchfork. It was settled: Satan was empirically the most extra being in existence. And sexy, but not as a cat, of course. Scout wasn’t quite that far gone. And it wasn’t like she was into the Devil in any way beyond the friendship she asked for when he showed up after her text, smelling of sharp cologne and burning wood. She could find him aesthetically pleasing in his wicked he-may-care way without wanting him or something.

Friendship. A funny word for what they had, given that the Devil could be infuriatingly charming, but was more often infuriating.

Scout said, reaching for the syringe she filled seconds ago, “If Hell is in the center of the Earth, why is the ninth circle cold? Wouldn’t it get hotter the closer to the center it gets?”

The cat sighed, his broad head leaning back in what Scout imagined as the cat-version of an eyeroll. “Not this again.”

“It’s an honest question,” Scout said, inserting the needle in her hip, a little bit back, and wincing. It didn’t matter that she stuck the needle in that exact spot every day. It didn’t matter that the benefits outweighed the negatives. No matter what she told herself, no matter where her mind went, it always hurt.

“I’m not the one who made the entire universe,” Satan drawled, sitting straight on his haunches. He kept his fur well-groomed, at least.

“Alright.” Scout asked another question that had been on her mind, but she’d been too nervous to ask: “Have you ever heard that song ‘The Devil Went Down to Georgia’?”  
“Okay, seriously.”

Sucking in a breath, she pulled out the syringe and placed it back beside the sink. She should clean it, but she didn’t have time.

God. Or Satan. Or whatever. She’d really done it. She’d ask her old classmate and longtime roommate on a date. Fanny, her unfortunately named acquaintance with a mom who had worked (or still worked, she guessed, not bothering to ask) with Scout’s as English professors; Fanny’s mom was a fan of the Romantics, especially John Keats. Frances Brawne, “Fanny.” It was what it was.

Scout wanted to surprise Fanny by not looking like a hot mess. The biggest twist of all. She had worked to get the body she had and it was her right to look like a hot mess, but she couldn’t help but admit, despite that ardent stance, she often had fantasies about what she’d look like if she could keep her shoulders straight without flinching and felt comfortable enough to be around others and something beside her coffee house apron, the three bland dresses she wore behind the college registrar desk since she quit grad school, and sweatpants. Grays, browns, blacks. (A week ago, she’d quit her jobs, which meant no more crabby Dicks and Susans and Beckys at 8:00 a.m. If anything, that alone made going to Hell forever worth it.)

A year ago, she would’ve rolled her eyes at the thought of looking appealing for anyone. She still did. This was for her, goddamnit. She earned this. After all that happened, she earned looking in the mirror and being happy. She realized that, and that was what mattered.

That still didn’t stop her cheeks from going hot when she thought about Fanny looking at her and judging her. She couldn’t look too much like a try-hard, couldn’t overdo it, but . . . she shouldn't be nervous, which made her more nervous.

When Scout donned her lipstick, messed with her hair, and straightened her long black dress, she sucked in a breath, running her palms down her belly and spreading her fingers across her hips. Ignoring the mirror and raising her chin, Scout patted her hair with her trembling hands. She swallowed, and no matter what she did, the bitter taste in her mouth wouldn’t leave. If Fanny tried to kiss her, that’d be no good.

Kissing. Right. That was a thing people did. People not broken and undesirable. Maybe that wasn’t true. Plenty of broken people found broken relationships, but not even Scout had been deemed worthy of anything like that, so much so she resented all the people who complained about their relationships because at least they had that. Someone, no matter how messy. Sure, she was being dismissive, just as others dismissed her. She would’ve given anything for someone to care if she killed herself and they found her dead, rather than someone only noticing once the smell got too bad. Maybe Fanny would’ve noticed before then, but she often let Scout be on her own, probably thinking she was giving her space she didn’t want to intrude upon.

Fanny, the only person who, on Scout’s birthday, on the day she’d prepared to go jump off a highway bridge into a river (a second attempt after the chocolate chip cookie one, also involving a bridge), who wished her a happy birthday and gave her a wilted yarrow flower that’d been lovingly pressed in one of her books. Scout had taped that flower to the mirror, although it hurt to look at it.

When she accepted the flower, forgetting if she said thank you, her eyes had stung. Tears, no sleep, it didn’t matter, she figured. She’d be killing herself soon.  _ You’ll hate me eventually, like everyone, and it’s good for me to die, so I don’t destroy us both. _ Better to make someone hate her immediately, think she was weak and selfish, than to get in too deep and make the wound of ripping them out of her life worse. It was easier digging a bullet out if it was an inch in, not ten inches.

_ Do it, just tell her you hate her. That you don’t want her in your life. Leave forever. Go anywhere. The sky’s the limit, and the sky is Satan’s credit card.  _ Or, as he called it, his debtor’s card.

She wanted, needed someone to love her. To want her. That was the point of the whole date thing.

But she couldn’t let it lead to anything. In a year, she’d be dead. This was the time to enjoy life, not expect anything meaningful. Looking for meaning all her life had only made her sad.

Not like she expected anything to flourish. Scout was Scout. She would ruin things, and now, she  _ had _ to ruin them, which was kinda comforting and scary at once.

But at least she had her good friend, Satan.

This was what she wanted. With Fanny, she’d gotten bold. Death made her bolder. She’d already lost her soul; every other loss or rejection paled in comparison. Satan hadn’t said much of it besides shrugging, but she swore she felt disapproval, like a hint of sulfur, lingering on him.

Her hands shook. She wanted to go to bed and forget she existed. A knot formed in her throat. She didn’t know much about Fanny. They were always in each other’s lives more out of habit than a genuine connection. Fanny was pretty, sure, with her brown skin, a little darker than Scout’s, though hers was dark, and her eyes were a soft brown set against Scout’s lighter, colder hazel. Fanny’s hair was straight and often loose where Scout’s was wavy and had, when Mom loved her, always been braided, and was now haphazardly kept back with clips and stray scrunchies she found in the bathroom cabinets, having forgotten if they were hers or Fanny’s.

“God,” Scout said. Satan’s eyes narrowed. “Man, what I’d do for some chocolate chip cookies right about now.” A bitter taste filled her mouth.

“How does my hair look?” Scout said. It was a dark sable with muted blue streaks where it had once been dyed and grew out, making the blue only noticeable in certain lights. Satan, after not being the center of attention for more than a minute of silence, went on to bathe his backside. “Will you stop?” She swatted him off the toilet, and he grumbled. “I sold my soul so you could be my friend. So friend me. Help me with my hair like a good friend does.” Their deal was that he’d encourage her, act as a friend would, or how he thought a friend did. And right now, he was awfully lousy at it.

Fluidly getting on his feet, Satan said, “Can you say ‘friend’ one more time?”

She grit her teeth.

He stuck out his tongue and shook his head, sneezing, revealing a line of pearly daggers for teeth.

She crossed her arms. “Seriously?” With a scoff, she ignored him and gripped the edge of the dingy counter, hyper-focusing on her mirror-eyes to keep from devolving into a mess of gasps and spasms from her lungs. What others would say was nothing. What felt like a heart attack, or something eating her from the inside-out.

A shadow fell on her, and she startled, seeing what—or who—was once her cat.

“Have you tried wearing it loose?” Satan said, standing with his legs spread wide apart and hands in his pockets. “Your hair, that is, though I can think of a number of things I prefer loose.”

Her jaw wouldn’t unclench as she tried to recapture what she felt before this out-of-nowhere darkness sucked her in like she’d fallen off a bridge into a dark, gnashing pit. Though when she looked at him, she couldn’t deny the pleasant view. (She would deny that she wondered how he’d look without the suit, his hair loose . . . okay, she wouldn’t think anymore.)

His skin was smooth and brown, but a little lighter than hers, and he wore a loose-fitting white silk suit and violet shirt, the latter particularly striking against the silver-gold of his locs, thickly braided and tied back with a few stray hairs. Calculating and careless, all at once. Out of all of the Devil’s traits, she liked his hair the most, not that she’d ever admit that out loud. His hair didn’t carry the same hidden knives as his gold-green eyes. Or the catlike premeditation in the way he slinked along with a lethal grace. Or secrets. Okay, maybe it had secrets. She hadn’t found out yet.

One diamond earring glinted in his left ear. He smelled of tobacco, sweet cologne, and whiskey, strongly colliding with her dollar store pomegranate perfume she had lovingly gotten after her last stipend payout before she quit grad school.

“Just breathe. It’s okay. This is nothing. You’ve already done so much already.” He said those words in a monotone, as if reciting something from memory, but there was a faint roughness to his voice that made it sound as if he was doing something other than dismissively saying what he thought would get her to calm down. He was dispassionate up to a point, blunt in stating what she hoped was truth, and that was comforting from someone called The Prince of Lies.

The angry part of Scout, always lurking like a garden snake hiding in grass, wanted to argue that he couldn’t possibly know what “progress” she’d made. How it all meant nothing. A degree. A place to live. Surgeries to make her more at home in her body. Still, she’d been empty. Still, she reflected every second about what she didn’t have. What she lost.

Satan was right.

The day she met him, she was on her bed. The five o’clock angle of the sun though her open window threatened to split her head open, so she shuttered herself in darkness, studying symbols and diagrams in one large book until her eyes ached from the strain. Scratching her scalp and coming away with flakes, she had wondered how long it'd been since her last shower. The exact same thoughts rolled around in her head. Requests to someone, something.

_ Please help me. I want to die. All I need is a friend.  _ The same sentences over and over, that reel in her head with her feet on the asphalt bridge. The day she sold her soul had been January 17th, her birthday. Today was February 17th.

She’d sold her soul through text, accidentally typing the wrong number when she looked up the suicide crisis chat number, after the national hotline had hung up on her twice, and sent a message _ : Please talk to me. I’m so lonely. I can’t take it anymore. I need a friend right now before I lose it.  _ It had seemed pointless at the time. Death was always looming in her mind. It was like she was destined to kill herself at some point, and she really wanted to get it over with already. She had half-hoped at some point someone or something would come along to change her mind, and another wasn’t happy about the thought of killing herself, but happy she had a concrete goal she could actually complete.

As much as she wanted to tell someone, it was all a fucking joke. When some rich person offed themselves, there were all these calls for sick people to reach out, but when they reached out, they were dismissed or locked up for being too sick to be around “normal” people. It was like how wild groups of animals would leave the weak ones to die, like how a mother cat would refuse to feed a disabled kitten. People thought they were better when all they did was hide the crosses they bore better.

She received a response in about a minute:  _ Okay, on my way. _ On their way? What? How did they know where she lived? Were they coming with the police? Was she going to get locked up in some ward? 

But he came alone, and the rest was history.

She sighed, slapping a palm on the counter, stained red with an ill-fated attempt to paint her nails. “Thanks, I guess,” she said, hating that she had to thank someone for speaking to her at all, “but you said ten minutes ago I should try pinning it up!”

He gave a toothy smile that didn’t meet his eyes. “Maybe I changed my mind.”

Admittedly, she liked using Satan more as her mirror than the actual mirror; even the Devil was less harsh than her reptile mind that was bent on her hating herself as much as a gator was bent on swimming, sunbathing, and dragging its prey into the black depths.

She held up two dangly owls. “What about the earrings?”

“Do we need to relive the earring incident?”

Scout grimaced, setting the earrings down and wringing her hands. “Okay, okay.”

It struck her as funnily absurd that, even in her worst moment, with her rancid breath and too-big, stained college shirt dwarfing her body, Mom was still with her; in high school, Scout had never abbreviated anything in her messages because she knew her English professor mom wouldn’t appreciate it.

She wiped her mouth, and only caught herself too late, wiping at the red smear and going to re-apply her lipstick. 

Mom—who she really shouldn’t have invoked, but she was like a lingering curse—had always told her she looked great with red lipstick, a rare feat for Mom herself, who preferred more neutral tones; it was striking on her brown skin, augmented the smattering of dark freckles along her nose. At least, Mom said that in the last few months before she went crazy from the fentanyl and kicked her own daughter out.

_ I hate you, more than anything, _ she thought, but it rang hollow. It echoed in her head, not with edgy spite like a kid who’d had their cell phone taken away for bad grades, but with the tiredness and soreness at everything that came before.

“Keep your voice down. If Fanny thinks I have a guy in here . . .” She had him share the bed because she was tired of spending all her time alone, but she made him sleep on top of the sheets, and they didn’t do anything, so it wasn’t strange. The more she told herself that, that she just needed any company at all, everything was okay. She had every right to do what she wanted.

Facing Satan, Scout said, “Anyway, how do I look?”

He rubbed his chin with his knuckles, still looking sharp in every part of his body and wickedly feline. Yeah, so what, the Devil was hot. Old news. Boring. Hopefully he didn’t start purring, or she’d be weirded out. “You look better than usual for a mortal.”

“Whatever.”

“Hold on.” He messed with her hair, arranging all the stray locks where he thought they should go, and she let him. A few weeks ago, she was lonely and ready to die. She’d been miserable and yet half-content in her misery, knowing it’d be over soon. Now, it was good to have someone fuss over her.

This, the helping her with a first date thing, was something Mom should be doing. Mom, who was probably still alive, doing—what? Still relying on fentanyl to help her pain and change her? Scout had thought when Dad died, her and Mom would grow closer because they were all each other had as Mom had to take a break from work post-surgery. But death had only divided them. Mom hated her for crying too little, for shutting down instead of grieving the way she was “supposed” to. Because if she didn’t cry enough, it meant she didn’t care that Dad died at all. Scout was too meek to say she was drowning too much in her tears to know how to let them loose.

When he was done, she said, “Thanks.” She looked at herself. Not bad. Maybe the churning in her stomach wasn’t her nerves or acid disintegrating her stomach lining. Maybe she was excited. If anything went wrong, she had someone to come back with her at night, even if he did nothing but look at her when she woke up from a nightmare. She’d told him all she needed was someone’s presence.

He made a sound between a grunt and a sigh, producing a cigarette in his slender fingers, musician’s fingers, made for delicate things. Feathers, roses, bones.

_ How many people have you killed with those pretty hands?  _ she wanted to ask. And she would. One night. Not when she was going on her first date since she was in pre-K and traded rocks with Freddy Larson before Bible study. Job, right, she remembered that lesson, especially because nothing said child literature like a man losing almost everyone he loved and being riddled with boils on his deathbed.

_ You did that, _ she wanted to say to Satan, and  _ I’m asking you about my hair. _

She pursed her lips. “Do you really need to do that?” He thought he was being suave (nine times out of nine, he thought that), but it made her a little sad, how he never seemed to be able to enjoy anything without a substance (like Mom), and he was an angel. Fallen, but a whole other being nonetheless, and even he couldn’t live without cigs and booze.

It scared her because she could end up like him, moving to stuff beyond pot to deal with her shaking hands and the constant murmuring behind her eyes.

“Yes. It’s imperative.”

“You’ll get . . .” She bit her tongue, but he smirked, the bastard. Cancer, she was going to say.

“Nope.” He took another puff.

“This is a no-smoking building, buddy.”

“Eh.” An elegant shrug. “This’ll all be smoke one day.” He exhaled smoke through his sharp nose. “Speaking of places, are you really sure this is what you want to do when you have a year—less than—to do anything you want? Why stay in the same old place?”

He had a point. “Because I’m not ready to leave yet.” Realizing how that sounded, she added, “Leave this place yet.” She understood the question, though. She’d spent so many months in this too-small apartment hating herself, so it stood to reason she’d want to get the Hell out, so to speak. But her bed and those walls were the only things to greet her and comfort her for the longest time. It was pathetic, and a room was a room; there were millions, thousands of them probably much nicer than the one she sat in as she either forgot to ate or binged potato chips. “And yeah, I want to do this.” It felt good to say that. For years, she did things. Jobs, school, but she had never truly  _ wanted  _ them. They were tasks, checklists till she could get home and sleep.

She was a suicidal atheist. Once. Once, she didn’t believe in any of this supernatural nonsense, the things people worshipped to justify what they did to others, but here it was. Here  _ he _ was, always obliging what she asked of him—with little passion if what they were doing didn’t involve smoking or drinking.

She had been a suicidal, lonely atheist, and yet she still mistakenly summoned Satan. God had to have a good and morbid sense of humor, especially if He, She, They gave birth to Satan. Either way, Scout didn’t so much care for God. God could have whatever powers They boasted. Saints, betrayed and alone, had burned after praying and weeping to a silent God, so why not go straight to the being that got stuff done? After ardent attempts at counseling, exercise, yoga, breathing exercises, socialization (the most disastrous and humiliating thing of all), and half-hearted attempts at crochet and painting, Satan wasn't really that illogical of a step.

“What is it?” Satan said, eyes guarded. Oh, she’d gotten lost in the void again.   
_ Stop. Stop thinking about the past. _

She wasn’t that person anymore. As nuts as it sounded, the promise of Hell had freed her. If she was going to Hell anyway, if she only had less than a year to really live, why not take a chance?

“Cigarette smoke makes my eyes itch,” she said.

“Ah.” He put out the cigarette with his tongue, and Scout winced.

“Don’t eat it, I swear to God.”

“No need to swear to that,” Satan scoffed, tossing the cigarette in the toilet and flushing it without a touch.

“Thanks for eventually stopping that up, Diablo.”

“No problem, amiga.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _THOM_ is a Goethe's _Faust_ retelling . . . of sorts. It's basically if Part One of Goethe and the globe-trotting hedonism in Marlowe's _Doctor Faustus_ were spliced together. Inspired by [this post](https://phantomrose96.tumblr.com/post/85487165602/fic-idea-where-a-lonely-person-sells-their-soul-to).
> 
> This is a story I had in my head since about 2015 - something to explore questions I find interesting about identity and redemption for once-divine beings like Satie Boi. Then, in 2016, my English undergrad thesis class was on Faust myth adaptations, and I literally wrote twenty pages on why Faust and Mephistopheles are canon. And now we're here. If you, by some chance, read the story I posted here years ago called "The Rope and the Redbud," first off, I'm sorry. Secondly, there are ideas from that that will pop up in here.
> 
> The entire work is currently complete but undergoing revisions, so I am posting as I revise a chapter. _THOM_ is part of a planned trilogy with the second part about a third of the way done. I also want to add that while I was raised by a Catholic and Baptist, I am an atheist with pagan sympathies. That being said, though I take liberties, I stride toward being respectful of all religious views. The story is less of a "take that" toward religion and more of a look at why and if someone as self-righteous as Satan can show empathy and regret and what that means for us and the nature of forgiveness and redemption.
> 
> Finally, for the record, this is not *looks at smeared writing on palm* a self-insert fantasy where a weary, queer grad student writer opines on sleeping with the Devil and imbues both characters with deep real-life insecurities about worth and struggling to cope with trauma and change, all while using dry humor to deflect.
> 
> Well, it's not _only_ that.


	2. Chapter 2

She was ready to go out, which made her less ready. A date. It was completely new to her. She’d always been too shy, never confident enough. Hiding in her hair. She couldn’t bother Fanny, like she always did, like how she bothered everyone to the point she needed to sell her soul for a friend. Who was the literal Devil. There was no way Fanny had actually liked her, but when she knew she had a year to live, something changed. All her hesitation vanished because if she was right, if no one loved her, if she failed, well, fuck it, what was scarier than death, and hadn’t she faced that without crying once?

Hell, she relished the thought of dying and people like Mom finally realizing how badly they messed up without a chance to start again. Even if she didn’t see it, even when she was freezing in the darkest, lowest circle of Hell, she would relish that revenge, that sort of thick chocolate it took a good ten minutes to swallow as it melted in your mouth. Except she wouldn’t see it happen, but she wished she could.

Satan rubbed his chin with his knuckles, again. He liked doing that.

“Are you jealous?” Scout asked suddenly. They blinked in sync.

“Do you want me to be jealous? I’m here to do what you want for a year. I can be jealous.” Their relationship, this friendship she asked for, was based on him giving her what she wanted out of obligation. She couldn’t read him, and she wondered if she asked for him to tell her everything he was feeling, if he would do it, and if she’d be wrong to ask that of him. It wasn’t as if she could get a good idea of who he was from the 150,000,000 search results for “Satan,” nor could she get a good idea of Actual Hell from the 600,000 search results for “Hell.”

“You don’t seem too keen on this.”

He shrugged. “‘Dates’ aren’t what I consider interesting, but it’s not my contract, my year.”

“Thanks for the help.”

His mouth deepened. “It’s what I do.” Satan flicked his wrist. “I help my spouses all the time with this rigmarole.” He had mentioned that, his three spouses: Lilith, Naamah, and Judas. (“Judas Iscariot?” “No, Judas Priest.” A bird was given shortly thereafter.) She had all sorts of questions. Once before she fell asleep, she rested on her side while he was on his back, both hands behind his head. He had told her a lot about Hell, how it was separated into circles, who ran the circles, just how much torture there was.

Rotating his wrist, he had answered, “Things aren’t quite so—medieval anymore.”

“So there’s no actual pain in Hell?” Scout had asked.  
He frowned, but it was gone in a second behind his careful mask. “It’s all—Hell is a frame of mind.”

She had turned her shoulders from him. “I’ll see, I guess.”

He had said nothing to that. But now, her questions weren’t about where she’d spend eternity. Obviously she wanted to know everything about life and death, and anyone in her situation would ask all they could to get that knowledge. But Satan himself was an enigma. Now her “friend” via contract, and in Hell, he’d be her . . . she didn’t know. She had asked, and he had shrugged. Before they shook on it and she signed the Terms & Conditions, she directly told him she wouldn’t be enslaved or trapped. She refused to be, and he said that though she’d only be allowed in Hell and could never return to Earth like all damned souls, Hell had plenty of variety.

Now more than anything, she looked at this enigma and wondered how he treated his spouses. Who they were as peop—demons, souls, whatever. How they met. How many people they killed. Usual relationship stuff.

Scout blinked. Satan was looking at her again with an expression she couldn’t read, patiently waiting as she drifted back to reality.

“Right. What are they l—” Scout jumped at a knock on the bathroom door.

Lowly, Satan said, “That’s your cue, killer.”

“What will you do?” Part of the arrangement was that, along with her soul being Hell’s in a year, the devil who made the deal would remain in close proximity. They even slept in the same bed, Scout’s bed, because she hated sleeping alone. (She wasn’t quite sure how Fanny would feel about that if she ever found out. The bed thing, not the selling her soul to Actually Satan thing. That was something best left to the sixth date, if they made it that far.)

“I'll be in the corner, drinking myself into a stupor.”

She made a face, and then lowered it. Didn’t want to ruin her makeup just because the Devil, of all people, made questionable life choices. She wished he wouldn’t, though. She couldn’t stand watching someone become different from any hard substances.

“What is it?” His expression didn’t change, not even the ghost of concern on his face.  
“Nothing.”

“You trust me to give you advice on makeup, but not what’s bothering you?”

“I haven’t excavated your past, and your past is probably a lot more interesting than mine.”

“Seriously, good thing you’re a fashion expert.”

He sniffed. “I’m your co-pilot. Just don’t go somewhere too extravagant.”

“Heck no. If there’s candles all over the place, I might set the place on fire.” Her hands got slippery when she was nervous, and her mind focused too much on itself and too little on what was around her.

“Candles are only good for two things.”

She set her hands on her hips. “And what are those things? Rituals and setting fires?”

“Smelling good and lighting a blunt.”

Scout shrugged. “Won’t argue with you there.”

It was strange to hear him talk like this, to think,  _ He feels so human. _ And then to think,  _ He feels so like me. _

“I can always be like Nero and take a fiddle.” That was what the Devil was in Georgia after all, tree fingers and red clay and fiddles.

“Uh, Scout?” Fanny said through the door. “You ready?”

Her heart caught when it beat against her ribs. Like it always did, it would return to its spot tattered, but somehow still thumping along.

“Fiddles didn't exist then, actually,” she told Satan under her breath. “He would've used a lyre.”

He cocked his head, tipping an invisible hat. “My mistake. Apologies for foregoing my thousands of years of historical knowledge for a common mortal saying.”

“I need to use my degree somehow.” It was like when Mom corrected her uses of “lay” and “lie.” Before . . .

Fanny said through the door, “You’re—you hear me, right?”

“Yeah, sorry, I’m coming!” Under her breath, she said to Satan, “Behave.” She faced the door and gripped the handle, which had gotten cold.

“Scout?” he said.

“Hm?” She did a double take. He hardly ever said her name.

“You’ll do great.” He said it without a smile, or anything to indicate pride, going to pick his teeth with his pinkie.

Nevertheless, she did smile and open the bathroom door, only to freeze, breath knocked out of her.

Fanny asked, crossing her arms like she was cold, “Were you talking to someone?”

“Yeah, uh, phone. Wrong number.”

“Oh.”

Scout looked back in the bathroom. He was gone, though she swore she saw a twitching tail melt into the door’s shadow.

This would be fine. No one would ruin this, not even the Devil.


	3. Chapter 3

He knew he was supposed to be a subtle cat, a subtle, invisible cat, as Scout went on her date with the woman, but cats couldn’t drink, and that Grateful Dead sitting by some young woman’s elbow looked pretty good right about now. A drink and a smoke, top it all off with a blunt to dull the sharpness, the loudness of the mortal world, all these goddamn pink flashing lights in this sports bar. What an odd place to take a potential lover, which he supposed he shouldn’t judge, since he met all his spouses in Hell. It was cheap, he guessed, and given Scout’s old employment besides her desk jockeying (“dealing with snippy fuckers who really need their coffee at eight in the fucking morning”), he guessed she couldn’t go all ritzy. And good food was good food near the city with lights always playing on the curtains and cannon scars still pocking its walls, which, he noticed, often looked like it’d shorten mortal lifespans.

The entire restaurant was open with brown, wooden walls that looked like they’d blow away in a bad storm. These walls were adorned with sports jerseys and surfboards, tapestries with various team sigils tapering from the ceiling. There was a round bar in the center of the large room and booths lining three of the four walls.

It was his job to stay out of the way, but to watch and make sure everything went fine. He really didn’t understand what the mortal girl wanted. Scout was like all humans, a mess of contradicting desires hitting all at once, a cacophony. She said she wanted a friend, okay, he was decent at the “friend” thing if being a friend meant watching someone and pestering them. They were both adept at it. She had said she wanted a friend and something new, and maybe dating someone at a sports bar half a mile from her apartment was new, but it was so . . . boring. Why was everything so boring? No orgies. No blow. Humans were so terrible dull, just sitting in places and talking. He did that all the time at the Stygian Council, hearing everyone—who were, besides his spouses and maybe Mephistopheles, far more idiotic than Satan—blabber on and bicker. Especially Belial, stupid Belial who repeated things so much the councils lasted half an eternity. Satan at least liked the meetings to last less than a century. How weird it was to get back on Earth and find out something like the printing press was invented, or cell phones, or snuggies.

Why was he thinking about all this? Right, the enemy of the Lord and Everything Good and Holy, real fucking bored tagging along with some human. At least he looked good, as always.

He hated boredom because in the lull, he thought of . . .

Scout had hangups. Boy, did she. When he smoked, she had gotten a look, the same look she always had, like she was in the stagnant part of the Styx. As if she, a human, could judge him, like he hadn’t been judged enough by God, his siblings, his subordinates, himself. As if she could judge his “health” practices when she had spoken raggedly and smelled off when he went to meet her. He didn’t need this. But this was only a year. (No need for her to know the Stygian Council whittled it down from twenty-four years at Mephistopheles' request.) They went as fast as rain on a lake, falling so each rippling drop couldn’t be distinguished in the black mass of water.

Scout and Fanny were in a booth while he sat with his elbows on the bar, politely declining any food for a mix of rum, vodka, and gin. Fanny was a girl with a heart-shaped face and dark skin, her eyes a warm brown, hair spilling over her shoulder in black curls. Her smile was easy, though when she thought Scout wasn’t looking, she cast looks of earnest concern, these sad, pensive sort of looks he remembered seeing on a girl in Eden when she found time alone. For what it was worth, Scout was more animated than he’d ever seen her in their short time together as she spoke about something—chocolate chip cookies?

“I'm afraid of myself,” Scout had said to him the first time they met, wildly staring and shaking as the fantastic became true before her very eyes (with those purple-black bags under them), “and I can't be alone. Not anymore. I want someone always by my side.”

I'm scared of myself, she had said. Hadn't he felt that in dark surges of fury and sadism? Not scared for himself, but of what he had become from loss. After God abandoned him and . . .

No. No thinking about God, God who was here-not-here. God who he could theoretically meet with any second, but who was still absent in him where there once was light and contentment and love. God was whiskey on his tongue, sweet but burning all the same; someone had left some thorns at the bottom. But since the bar didn’t have whiskey (a bar! In Georgia!) the vodka would have to do. The plastic cup the barkeep, a balding, pink, week-old bagel of a man, gave him was blue with approximately 74.7% artificial flavor when he snaked his tongue in it. Even with names like Redheaded Slut and Demon Whore Driver, even the alcohol was boring. This was nothing like partying with the Borgia.

The smell of perspiration filled the air as a bunch of muscled young men sat on the opposite side of the bar, chattering about gym equipment. As far as brief disruptions went, they were dull. It all was dull. And worse, in this situation, he wasn’t the attention of anything. He didn’t start a war against God to be ignored like this. Humans were a mistake, one God saw fit to run with like a soured joke. The Creator even sacrificed a son for humans, not for the angels, who were children of stars and light, not mud and dirt. The humans who were so misguided God had to commit genocide once because there was no hope for them. If Satan had been allowed to kill the humans in the Garden, none of this nonsense would be giving him a migraine, which was the most pressing thing at the moment.

How could the beings that caused fire and mayhem be so incredibly dull? Even Hell was dull, probably because it was full of human souls, and yet all the squabbling grated on him. Indeed, he was king, so it wasn’t exactly his place to complain when the Stygian Council questioned him This life was a far cry from the meticulous time he spent building Hell or trying to seduce Jesus in the desert. Or the whole thing with Job’s kids.

His mouth soured. He hadn't cared, and he shouldn't. Mortals had God. They went to Heaven if they died, if they weren’t damned. He gulped down his drink. Job got new kids. Satan didn’t get new kids when God swore any kid he or Lilith had would be killed, and all his daughters had died. After that, he decided that, even with Naamah, the kid thing was in the past.

In the grand scheme of things, the burn of alcohol was nothing, and no amount of altering his mind could take him far enough away from his resentment, that seething, lonely knowledge in him. An eternity ago, such indulgences were beneath him. He had sneered at anything that’d make him anything but sober and affect his judgement and calculations. But after a time of dwelling in his cold, dark seat of power, the blue shadows sinking into his bones, which were hardened stardust, he grew tired of constant consciousness. He let himself sleep, and he let himself indulge. He'd drink and stick needles into himself until he was “happy.” It wasn't that recreational pleasures made him complete; they made him forget, if only for scant half-seconds, how he was empty.

Like right now. Was he—was he on his second or third drink?

A body saddled—sauntered next to him, and Satan, normally one to use his silver tongue, glowered.

He was greeted with a wide, familiar smile. “Really living it up on the surface, aren’t you?”

Satan blinked. “Meph.” It was Mephistopheles all right, right down to the necktie. His suit was similar to Satan’s, but it was an outrageous scarlet, a shocking contrast to his pale features. “What are you doing here?”

“Why wouldn’t I check in on my oldest friend?” The barkeep came over and asked Meph if he wanted anything. Meph held up a hand and politely declined with a musical laugh.

“Why couldn’t you have done this assignment?” Satan blurted, and immediately regretted it. It was the same reason Meph quit the whole soul gig in the 1800’s. Because of one man. Satan didn’t need to do the assignment either. He had thought he’d disconnected the soul line, but he thought this might break up the monotony.

“You seem like you’re having the time of your life. Besides, Lilith takes care of everything just fine.” It was true. She was really instrumental in the formation of Hell, and as much as others would tease him, they wouldn’t dare tease or undermine Lilith. His other spouses, Naamah and Judas, helped too in their own ways. Naamah was a much friendlier face to soften any orders, and Judas did his quiet work to make Hell slightly less . . . Hellish, which not everyone appreciated.

“How long have you been watching me?”

“Please, like I have nothing better to do.”

“Any updates?”

Mephistopheles rubbed his chin. “Nothing, really. Barron has been complaining about that demon he converted, you know, our infamous Breton.”

Ugh. Gilles de Rais, he hated that guy. Thank God after That Incident with Joan of Arc, Jeanne, however the Hell you spelled it, he was much more quiet. Served him right dragging a literal saint out of Heaven with his disgusting antics. And everyone said Satan liked attention too much. Anyone who hurt kids was pretty much extra dead to him.

“I wanted to inquire about something.”

“No, you cannot sit in my chair.”

Meph scoffed, flicking his wrist. “You’re never any fun, not like you used to be.”

Satan’s shoulders stiffened. He knew it. “What is this about?”

Meph’s sly grin widened, his canines sharper than the teeth his human shape should have. “I was thinking about how distracted everyone is nowadays, and I imagine it’s the same in Heaven. We could—”

“No.”

Meph still smiled, but it dropped quite a bit. “You didn’t let me finish.” He added, teasing, “I should’ve come to you sober. You’ve always been a grumpy drunk.”

“I know why you want to be in Heaven again,” Satan sniped. “Really, I do.” It was a fine thought, except for the whole thing where he’d get thrown in a lake of fire forever, along with everyone loyal to him. That put a damper on doing the second War in Heaven.

_ And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever. _

Meph replied, “It’s obvious. Because Heaven belongs to us, and we’ve been denied for far too long.”

Satan stared at Scout, who hadn’t met his eyes once since they came here, She only had eyes for Fanny. “I understand what you want perfectly well. I’ve known you too long. You were fine with Hell as your new home and never spoke about this until he came along.” Satan couldn’t understand it. Meph had been one of the most prominent proponents of angels reigning over humans in God’s eyes, and yet he was obsessed with that one pitiful human.

“Don’t throw that in my face. You know it’s more than that.”

“But that is a part of it, isn’t it? I’d wager it’s more than half of it.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“Meph, look at me. Do you really think Faust would be happy in Hell? Really happy?” Satan kinda hated Faust. Not to be self-centered, but Hell was all about him. He kinda started the whole thing before God made human bones, teeth, and flesh from bones and clay—clay as red as it was in Georgia, if not brighter.

“What do you mean?”

“You tricked him and his girlfriend.”

“She was much too young for him,” Meph said, who was several hundred centuries older than Faust.

“You made Gertrude or whatever her name was—”

“Gretchen. Or Margarete.” Meph waved a hand. “I forget.”

“Those don’t even sound similar. Anyway, you tricked her into killing her and Faust’s kid in the tub, so she’d get the rope and you’d have him all to yourself. He knows all this by now, probably. Your whole ‘being Helen during sex’ shtick for a few years at some beach house isn’t going to change that.” This was a sore topic, he knew, and he didn’t enjoy rubbing this all in. When Meph had asked him to fuck him in the form of Faust, he had wept in a way they only could with each others, as angels once in God’s highest retinue. He wept and spoke in broken strings about the house by the sea where he spent years with Faust—Johannes, John—until his death.

They (the fallen ones) all missed what they had left in Heaven, even missing what they themselves had once been, and when they found something good, Heaven stole that too. But they had had one chance to win, and they’d lost. He was too tired for the Revelation, which would lead to his inevitable defeat and suffering and—he didn’t know what’d happen to the other fallen angels or demons. To Lilith, Naamah, Judas. Lilith with her liquor eyes and strong hands. Worshipping her dark skin, her owl-orange eyes augmented by the pregnant moon. Teeth gleaming behind her bloody lips.

Naamah with her soft face and full laugh—fingers worrying her lips. Judas with his dark curls and endless frown.

Meph shifted after Satan’s words. The barkeep stared at them oddly over his shoulder, and Meph’s mouth deepened, no longer a bright smile. His eyes went from an intense green to something murky and indiscernible. As if Satan hadn’t said any of it, he replied, “If we conquered Heaven, I wouldn’t take him to Hell. We’d be in Heaven together.”

“We can’t leave Hell forever. It needs us. We rule it.”

“And why not? Lilith and the other demons can run it. They’re doing just fine now.”

“You don’t think any of them would want to go to Heaven?”

“I think Lilith would spit in God’s eye before anything else.”

That was fair. “True enough, but she’d only get that opportunity in Heaven.” He could see her now, decked in scarlet and finding ways to corrupt and redesign Heaven to her liking. All these years, knowing that the Revelation was a sensitive subject, no one had really mentioned it. Eventually, everything stayed as it was, dull and melancholy, but a little bearable. More bearable than the alternative.

“I have Hell to worry about. I can’t worry about anything else.”

“You’ve really given up.” He almost sounded disappointed, yeah, join most of the universe.

“You know how this ends.” The lake of fire. Eternal torment. Satan could lay low forever and still be tossed in by Michael, his ex, the one he’d cradled against on the soft, gliding clouds close to Venus peering down on them.

He needed a smoke. “I need a smoke.”

“Look, you’re miserable here. I get it. I’m miserable everywhere, but you can’t let some book written by mortals make you think that’s how it’s always going to be. Once we return to Heaven and conquer it, everything will be better.”

Satan wanted to believe that.

“What makes you think that?” What had made Satan happy was God inside him, literally a piece of him torn out during his fall and leaving a gnashing void, a void worse when it was quiet.

“Because of how everything was before!” Meph’s outburst through stares from everyone, including Scout and Fanny. Scout met Satan’s eyes, brows drawn in concern. He shook his head.

Lowly, Satan said, “You just want to be with your human again.”

In his regular voice, Meph replied, “You’re impossible. What’s the cardinal sin again?”

“Yeah, real prideful, not storming around and avoiding getting myself chained up.”

“You’re prideful because you don’t want to fail.”

“Is that really that bad? If my fate when I fight back is to be the one who gets all the eternal pain, and Hell knows what’ll happen to everyone else, I’d rather step back on the whole ‘world-ending war against the Divine’ thing, thanks.”

Meph said, “You’re impossible.”

The men across the bar were snickering and gossiping.

“Looks like he’s having a spat with his boyfriend.”

Meph winked at them and took Satan’s drink, sipping it and making a face. “How do you stand this human swill? I couldn’t even bear what the witches would have at their Walpurgisnacht orgies, once upon a time.”

“You gain an affection to it, after awhile.”

“You know, maybe I should be King of Hell while you’re gone.”

“Good luck telling Lilith that. I’d ask you to tell me how it goes, but I imagine this’d be the last time we’d see each other.” That was no joke at Lilith’s expense; she was, quite frankly, a badass, and if she wanted to be the King of Hell tomorrow, he’d hesitate to deny her. She had protested when she was first seen as Satan’s consort, an auxiliary part of him.

“I was thinking I’d be a better king because I’m better at standing on tables and singing.”

Satan snorted, looking over at Scout’s table, and then at the cloud of cologne and testosterone on the other side of the bar. One of the guys was eying Scout. “What kind of talent is that?”

“It really rallies the troops,” Meph replied smoothly.

“Yeah, well I can stand up and sing just fine.”

“Right. I’m sure.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I’m absolutely sure of your talents, though they can’t be as good as mine.”

“Please. I was renowned for my beautiful singing voice in Heaven.” Since he left Heaven, he never really felt the need to sing.

“Prove it. Go ahead, show me.”

The guy staring at Scout started to get up.

Satan slapped his palms on the counter, which resounded through the entire establishment, a thunder roll. “I  _ will _ .”


	4. Update

A quick update: So, I was recently brainstorming developmental revisions with one of my dedicated beta readers, and after talking, I found out how to change a major story arc that didn't work and made me cringe. The change is more substantial than I anticipated, as I have had a major shift in how I view that part of the story and my solution to fix it. As such, because I don't want to upload a version that's outdated, I'm putting this on an indefinite hiatus until I wrangle with this thing and shape up one of the core components.

But if you liked what you read so far, thank you! <3 This is one of my favorite things I've written, and I'm so excited it to share it with you once it's done.


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